Blood Wars
The Blood Wars were a series of seemingly-eternal conflicts between the Ruthgar and Blood Forest Satrapies . For centuries, the two satrapies had been allied, uniting their military and monetary forces into a hegemonic juggernaut, and the noble families of each marrying their sons and daughters to the sons and daughters of noble families of the other Satrapy. For this reason, nearly every Ruthgari noble family ahs some Blood Forester blood, and vice-versa. That all ended with Vician's Sin , an unknown but infamous event that not only ended the alliance with a single stroke, but also plunged the two Satrapies into a century of war. The Blood Wars were finally brought to a decisive end by Prism Gavin Guile . The Conflict's End To end the conflict, Gavin and his mother Felia Guile devised a plan that was brilliant, subtle, brutal, and ruthless. He commanded the leading families of both Satrapies to gather in a Hippodrome to pray for peace. Attendance was not voluntary, and no drafters were allowed to be brought along, save the members of the noble families were who drafters. The Blackguards relieved all ~2,000 people of their primary weapons (swords, spears, ataghans,) before they were allowed to enter, though they allowed them to keep small knives for personal defense. Each family lined up in a column, according to their lottery number. All in attendance were told that the numbers were random, but in reality, Felia and Gavin had carefully selected who would get which numbers (those who were most likely to refuse to lay down their arms and end the conflict, and who would continue to wage war. "The most pugnacious, the bitterest, the most hateful or guiltiest person in the whole family be first in line.") Each lottery paper was marked by Gavin with a number etched in Superviolet. Felia wore Lucidonius' superviolet spectacles around her neck, and each time she took a paper out of the bowl, she bowed her head, as if in prayer, while in reality looking through the spectacles to see the proper paper to grab. After the actual prayer for peace, Gavin, standing in front of a ceremonial table, addressed the assembled families by asking who would join him at the table of peace. When only one family sent a representative forward, Gavin told them that their war was an affront to Orholam, and that all of them knew it, but continued to fight because their bloodlust was greater than their shame. Gavin further rebuked them by citing the fact that Satraps and even Prisms had come to the respective families and asked them to make peace, to which the families responded with "temporary truces and lies. Lulls in which you rearm and breed," and then continuing the war as soon as possible. Gavin once again asked who would join him in peace. When no one moved, Gavin proclaimed "so be it" and shot spikes of Blue Luxin along the superviolet strands he had attached to the throats of those in the first row. The front person in each family's column dropped dead. Gavin then proclaimed that "war seems so random ... like a lottery, But in my lottery, only you who are responsible for this war will die." The shock and outrage of this set off the hot temper of a young member of the Green Apple family of Blood Forest, who drew his knife and charged at Gavin. Gavin shocked all of them by turning his back, and the young man was cut down by then-Watch Captain Ironfist. Gavin, enraged, once again commanded them to sit at the table of peace. When no one did, he sent another wave of blue missiles into the throats of the worst members of the families (who had been deliberately given the lowest numbers.) This panicked the remaining people, who tried to flee, and Gavin sprung a trap that he had laid in the hippodrome: a massive wall made of blue, green, and yellow Luxin that blocks their escape, and just beyond the wall, Blackguards with weapons ready and luxin charged. Gavin's drafters and Blackguards herded the nobles back into their lines. When one of the nobles asked how he expected her family, which had been diminished in size, wealth, and power, to stand up to both the Willow family of Blood Forest and the Malargos family of Ruthgar, Gavin responded that whoever accepted his peace would have his protection (and, by extension, the protection of the Chromeria,) and whoever broke it would receive swift and brutal death. All of this was, finally, enough to bring the heads of all of the families to sit at the table and negotiate a permanent peace and end to the Blood Wars. Several years later, the peace was challenged when Marcos-Sevastian Guile, a cousin of the main Guile family and apparently not possessed of the typical Guile intellect, exacted vengeance for a wartime rape in like fashion, thinking his blood connection to Gavin would shield him from trouble. Gavin later remarked that if Marcos-Sevastian had had a shred of the Guile intellect, he would have known that the truth was the exact opposite. Marcos-Sevastian was found dismembered in the town square, with a sign propped under his bloody chin reading "so too to all who break the Prism's Peace."